Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Brian S. Brown is back on the Chai Feldblum train

When marriage discrimination became a lost cause, Brian S. Brown should have found a new hobby.

NOM should really change its name. They were organized to derail same-sex marriage. They lost. Now they are attaching themselves to every anti-LGBT cause that comes along. All of this agitation is always just pretext for asking for money. And they have done it again:

Help Us Stop This Radical Lesbian refers to Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner Chai Feldblum. She has been confirmed twice already. Most recently in 2013 by a vote of 54-41. Now, given that she was renominated by Trump the margin is likely to be even greater.

Feldblum's crime is CWG — Commissioning While Gay. Feldblum, by the way, was raised by Holocaust survivors as an orthodox Jew. She is a graduate of Harvard Law and clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun who came to the Supreme Court via Richard Nixon's nomination. She is on the faculty at Georgetown Law and who is Brian Brown fooling? Every gay person in any position of influence or power is deemed to be a “radical.” Her position on LGBT equality is perhaps best expressed by the mission statement of the Moral Values Project which Feldblum founded:

We believe that moral values matter in the governing of our polity. And we believe that Americans can articulate, and live up to, a more progressive set of moral values regarding sexuality, sexual orientation and gender equity. Sexuality can be a positive, important force in our lives. Heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality are all morally neutral. But the love that is expressed by those who are straight, gay or bisexual is morally good – and all equally morally good. All forms of gender are morally neutral. But lack of gender equity is morally bad.

Pretty tepid stuff if you ask me. According to NOM:

Feldblum has long advocated for the supremacy of LGBT rights, especially when it comes to conflicts with Christians. Her views are so extreme that she's said that she could not imagine a situation where the constitutionally-guaranteed right of religious liberty would prevail in a legal case over the interests of gay or lesbian individuals.

That is derived from a 2006 interview that Feldblum gave Maggie Gallagher for the Weekly Standard. Feldblum claims that she was misquoted and whenever the religious right quotes the piece they omit important context with three ellipses. There really is nothing terribly extreme about Chai Feldblum. But that's not the point.

This is the point (quoting Brown):

We did not budget for this fight, but it's just too important to ignore. We don't have any choice but to do everything possible to fight this nomination. Please help us defend the religious liberty rights of every American by making a generous financial contribution today. Thank you!

I would love to see Brian S. Brown explain his expenditures in a (probably futile) campaign to derail Feldblum's re-nomination. I ask myself; Don't they have anything better to do? The answer is decidedly “no.”